An Inventory Rationing Method in a M-Store Regional Supply Chain Operating under the Order-up-to Level System

This paper addresses the inventory rationing issue embedded in the regional supply chain inventory replenishment problem (RSIRP). The concerned supply chain, which was fed by the national supply chain, consisted of a single warehouse distributing a single product to multiple stores (M-stores) with independent and normally distributed customer demand. It was assumed that the supply chain operated under the order-up-to level inventory replenishment system and had only one truck at the regional warehouse. The truck could make one replenishment trip to one store per period (a round trip per period). Based on current inventories and the vehicle constraint, the warehouse must make two decisions in each period: which store in the region to replenish and what was the replenishment quantity? The objective was to position inventories so as to minimize lost sales in the region. The warehouse inventory was replenished in every fixed-interval from a source outside the region, but the store inventory could be replenished daily. The truck destination (store) in each period was selected based on its maximum expected shortage. The replenishment quantity was then determined based on the predetermined order-up-to level system. In case of insufficient warehouse inventories to fulfill all projected store demands, an inventory rationing rule must be applied. In this paper, a new inventory rationing rule named Expected Cost Minimization (ECM) was proposed based on the practical purpose. The numerical results based on real data from a selective industry show that its performance was better and more robust than the current practice and other sharing rules in the existing literature.